


Bellmere

by Gerbilfriend



Series: stories from the women of one piece [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 17:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerbilfriend/pseuds/Gerbilfriend
Summary: Because she was more than just a beautiful mother.





	Bellmere

**Author's Note:**

> Started this like two years ago. Liked it. Decided to finish it off while I was in the mood, for once not an oc or crack cross over.

He waits outside the door unable to stand the sight of his love in pain. He paces back and forth his feet wearing grooves in the floor. 

Suddenly it’s over. 

There are a baby’s tears as her mother's blood spills out crimson on the bed. He feels his legs shake as the doctor hands the bloody squalling infant swaddled in a faded white blanket to him. 

“I’m sorry” he says his face a mask of pain, “we could not save the mother, but we did save the baby” he pauses for a second trying to find the words, “do you have a name picked out” the doctor asks.

He knows it's not this infant's fault, knows that she did not mean to kill her mother, knows that her mother loved her so much but still when he looks at this chubby crying creature all he can think is murderer. 

He knows what to name her.

“Her name will be Bellemere, that way she will always know she had a beautiful mother” he says as Bellemere quiets a bit. He does not say anything else. 

\--------------------------------------

She’s running with the bread in her hands. It's white bread with a crisp crust and it’s still warm from the ovens. It smells delicious and fresh. It’s probably the first time she has had fresh bread in months and it’s glorious.

She runs to the tangerine orchards her mother used to own and maintain. She darts through the dirt streets of Cocoyashi, calloused bare feet pounding on the ground as she runs, panting, out of the city. 

Bellemere only slows when she reaches a small ramshackle home. The smell of mold makes her sneeze as she slips inside her feet padding on the dirt floor. 

Bellemere slips through a door into the small room that had once been a bedroom. There is one picture still on the wall.

Under the layer of dust and through the cracked glass Bellemere can see a smiling woman. 

The woman was her mother. She knows that in the way she sees how similar their faces are. In their eye color and hair color and the shape of their faces but at the same time she’s not. Bellemere knows nothing of her mother save for the fact that she killed her. 

She leaves the house.

Outside she can breathe again. Inhale the fresh scent of tangerines in the overgrown orchard and dream of what she would do if she lived her in this small peaceful area instead of her father's empty house.

She sits down slowly relishing the plush feel of the grass beneath her feet as she leans her back against the hard truck of a tree and feels the pressure that the patterns of the hard bark on her skin through her thin, worn shirt made of cheap cloth. 

She eats the bread slowly savoring every mouthful as she breath, this is the one place she feels at home.

\--------------------------------------

“Now don’t you be causing any mischief this time, if I hear one word from Genzo” he trails off the threat obvious in his tone as he turns to get walk up the gangplank to his ship. 

The tangerines, coconuts and other produce is loaded and secured as he calls out orders to his crew. 

Bellemere watches from beside Genzo. She forces down a shout or a call.

She almost calls love you out to the ship sailing away because that’s what daughters say when their fathers are sailing away but she doesn’t because she cannot remember if her father ever said love you to her.

She’s pretty sure she would remember if he had. 

Squinting her eyes to the horizon she cannot see her father's ship anymore. “Let's go brat” Genzo says roughly as he turns away from the docks. She does not follow him back. 

Instead she runs laughing as she hears him yelling only stopping when her breath comes only in short gasps and her bare feet are sore from pounding along the ground.

\------------------------------------------------

He does not return. She stands at the edge of the sea day after day watching the horizon for a sign of his ship but nothing ever appears.

She waits and she watches. It was the only promise he ever made to her. 

He said he would come back.

Now the town whispers sympathy to, “the poor girl all alone now”. Bellemere wants to scream. She was alone before. and nothing has really changed.

Things only change when her father's debtors come the take the house that she had lived in and everything inside. It doesn't bother her though, she never really cared for that house anyways.

The tangerine grove becomes her home. She spends her days snacking on the sweet fruits in between quick runs to town.

  
  


When she passes through town people whisper in hushed tones about her.

The thing about small towns is that everyone knows each other and her she has the drunk father who ran away and the dead mother. 

She rages and runs and nothing changes until she is fifteen and the marines come to town ..

\-----------------------------

The marines are a way out. “I’m joining the marines” she tells Genzo, the only one who really

cared about her.

He looks at her, eyes wide with shock, “Are you sure?” he asks her trying to ascertain the truth of why she is doing this.

“I am” Bellemere says with eyes like steel, “I’m going out to sea”.

He doesn’t seem all that surprised. Maybe he knew that Cocoyashi was to small for her, just as she was realizing.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to go out with a lash hurrah.

She can't help it, pick pocketing the villagers for supplies and watching them gather and glare at her is just too funny. Marines don’t steal, Bellemere knows that but she is not a marine quite yet.

Laughing she takes a small wooden dory to the closet marine recruitment post and she signs on. 

\----------------------------------

“Are you sure” the men ask because she is young and a woman but she laughs in their faces.

“Yes I am” Bellemere says her face hard with determination. 

She knows she has no prior combat experience but she knows that she is strong and fast and clever and that has to be enough.

She will make it enough. 

Bellemere can’t help but sulk a bit, the uniform is boring so to liven her appearance she starts styling her hair with shaved bits and a ponytail to keep it out of the way. The other recruits laugh at her until she takes to basic training faster  than any  of them.

They don’t laugh then.

Before she knows it basic training is over and she has graduated at the top of her class . It is the best feeling she has ever felt. Better than the time she pulled off a heist of the traveling merchants or climbed the bluff for the first time. 

She is strong and it is being acknowledged. She is not just Bellemere who no one really has time for or the unwanted daughter or the thief (or all three at once).

She is not the girl who had a beautiful mother. Instead she is Petty Officer Bellemere who is going to sail on her first ship soon. 

Then  she is sailing the sea.

\----------------------------------

Her captain is a stern man named Sato. He looks her over when she first boards his ship with a suspicious gaze. “We don’t take layabouts here” he says harshly, looking Bellemere over, judging. 

“Works for me”, she chips back, throwing in a flirtatious wink. See how he takes that!

She she does the fifty push ups in recompense and when she gets up she thinks she can see something in his eyes.

It was worth it. 

\----------------------------------

Bellemere learns to love the sea. Her father left on it (and freed her with his leaving) and she finds her sea legs.

The only thing she loves more is fighting. 

Her name might be Bellemere and she might have had a beautiful mother but on the sea that doesn’t matter. 

She grows and changes as the sea shifts beneath her. The Pirate King rises and falls as she fights and fights.

The East Blue gets harder and harder buts it's worth it.

\----------------------------------

Somehow she makes captain.

Than her crew is gone. 

Too late she realized it was a sacrifice ploy.

Bellemere survives because she has been fast and strong and clever her whole life.

No one taught her that. 

But it doesn’t matter because she is alone and her legs are sore and for once she doesn’t want to run.

But there is a little girl holding a baby and for one moment she is back in the tangerine fields of Cocoyashi.

Nobody had helped her there. Not really. 

But she can be there for these kids. 

\----------------------------------

Maybe she could be a beautiful mother. 

It's funny. She is still starving in the tangerine groves and there still is a girl running through the islands, stealing as she goes.

The only difference is that the girls know they are loved. 

\----------------------------------

At least Bellemere hopes they do.

When she dies all she can do is hope that she was more than a beautiful mother.

She hopes she was a good one as well.

  
  



End file.
